Practical Tenten
by I like angst
Summary: In a world full of dreamers, she was the practical one. She doesn't have much choice in the matter. A brief character study. Slight one-sided NejiTen


Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Not so standard: I made a few corrections. Hopefully it reads better.

Tenten is a practical person. It is both an observation and a character trait. Her clothes are comfortable and durable. Her hair is neat and maybe a little old fashioned, but it never gets into her eyes. At the same time, she does not ignore her femininity. She realizes that her gender is the first thing anyone notices about her. If they make the mistake of underestimating her because of it then they deserve getting their ass handed to them. So her lip gloss is tinted and her hair when not in buns is left in a long braid. She paints her fingernails a dark shade of red both because it pleases her and because the color hides the discoloration and bruising that can occur from wielding heavy blunt weapons as a preferred method of combat.

Tenten is practical because she needs to be to survive in Konoha. She is a woman born without a clan, with no secret techniques to inherit, no blood line limits, no legendary Sanin instructor, and no sealed beast. Her father had been a first generation shinobi, her mother had been a village beauty, and they had married for love. Her father is long dead (black and white photos littering her grandparents walls tell her she has his chin) and her mother is gone (the one scarred photo Tenten has of her is buried under a satchel of children's clothes and wooden weapons). Her two civilian grandparents could not afford to send her to a private school so she had been sent to the academy with the secret hope that she wouldn't get past genin. She knew that being a genin was no guarantee of safety. So she strived early onto be a competent and skilled kunoichi.

Tenten is practical because someone has to be the voice of reason. When she had been on Team Gai she had to beat common sense into her teammates' thick skulls. Gai and Lee had an almost inhuman ability to pick the most difficult and bizarre challenges possible. Survival training had included Gai kidnapping them from their homes in the middle of the night and abandoning them in the woods with an old map. It might have been a reasonable assignment if Gai hadn't dressed up- as woodland creatures and started attacking them. After nearly having a heart attack at the sudden reindeer head butt attack— which had sent Neji and Lee flying face first into a nearby tree—Tenten had been prepared for the rabid squirrel nut grab attack. Gai deserved that kunai below the belt.

She had to be the voice of reason if they ever hoped to get the actual mission done. Neji was too quiet, too patient, and too proud at times to put a stop to the adrenaline fest they had to endure. If anything he would often make matters worse challenging Lee and Gai's beliefs. When reasoning failed, she had to resort to brute force. It was no secret that her fist had made multiple impacts with all of their skulls at one point or another. Of course, Gai was good natured about it and very forgiving. She always thinks well of him, even if he was an unrestrained optimist. She wouldn't have gotten as far as she did without Gai as her teacher. She regrets that she never told him that. He was the closest thing to a father she ever had, and she wishes she could have thanked him for it. All she has of him now is a name engraved on stone.

Tenten is practical because she was taught to be that way. Her father had died in the Kyuubi attacks when she was one. Her mother was still beautiful and after two years of being a widow with a child she had decided to move on. One evening, she combed out her three year olds hair, put her to bed, and left. Her Grandmother woke her up the next morning and had put her hair into two buns. The old woman had been her center of gravity in childhood. She is a stern and blunt woman who had no time for self-pity. There were unpaid debts, a husband whose memory was deteriorating little by little every day, a dead son, and a young child to raise. She made sure that for every fairytale the academy tried to fill her granddaughter's head with she had a bitter pill of truth to give as soon as she came home. On top of her school work Tenten assisted her grandmother with the sewing she had taken in to pay their bills. Tenten had also been responsible for putting her grandfather to sleep; because, he would not listen to grandmother anymore. He would forget the old woman and yell at her to stop calling herself his wife. Her grandmother didn't cry; Tenten would walk him to his room, read a story, and soothe him like a small child to get him to sleep. Tenten learned a lot from her grandmother, like how to smile even when the world is falling down.

Tenten is practical because she isn't very good at dreaming. When she was six years old, after a fight with her grandmother, she decided to runaway. She had packed up her belongings into her school bag, two shirts, a pair of shorts, and her stuffed kunai plushy, and had snuck out of the house with her mother's picture in hand. She was going to find her mother and live with her; grandma must have scared her off too! Tenten would find her and mom would be so happy to see her. The police would bring Tenten home six hours later, sniveling, crying and dirty.

She grew not to care about the woman who gave birth to her. It was only grim curiosity that led her to wander off during their first mission in the Tea country. The woman was beautiful still, with loose curling dark brown hair and glinting cat like eyes and soft white skin accentuated in silk and jewels. The two girls that sat by her in the courtyard were perfect little dolls with flowers braided in their long hair. They wore pink cheongsams trimmed with gold, a lovely set, perfectly matched. After that day Tenten stopped wearing pink.

She had dreamed that she would be a legendary kunoichi like Tsunade. She believed that her strength and determination would impress the older kunoichi, and perhaps she would take her on as an apprentice. Perhaps one day she could be legendary? Her chakra was not conducive to healing though, and she was not the best friend of Konoha's jinchuuriki. Sakura is freakishly brilliant though; so who is Tenten to begrudge Tsunade for picking the best candidate?

She had dreamed of love. A part of her knew she was asking for trouble. He was self-absorbed, not really conceited, just very self-defeating. The problem was that if he couldn't see himself amounting to anything more than a caged bird, he couldn't see any of them amounting to much either. She hoped the crush would go away; maybe he would push to far, say too much, and she could finally let him go. Then one day he gets his ass handed to him by a loudmouthed blond and she knows she's in trouble.

He changes. He smiles instead of smirks. He talks to her and Lee like equals and actually treats them with respect. She really tries to tell herself that nothing is ever, ever going to happen between them. She will be a strong kunoichi of the leaf that is more important than some stupid and totally inappropriate crush. She knew she was plain, and she feels so damn ordinary sometimes that she hates the face that looks back at her. He wasn't the type to fall for beauty or showoffs though. So she does something stupid and confesses, and of course he cannot reciprocate. It is awkward at first, but slowly they thaw and grow closer than they were before.

When he finally asks her the big question she feels that maybe she is allowed to live her dreams. So what if she is no longer a kunoichi, she's gotten that big clan. Of course now she has to watch every single thing she says because the Hyuuga are watching, and they see everything. So what if being together meant being alone most of the time? So what if she feels she can no longer find a place she fits in? So what if it feels like she's wearing a mask? Sometimes she forgets where the mask and her ends; so who is she to say what she really wants? She dreams of having the perfect family. It's the last puzzle piece to perfection, isn't it?

She looks to him for guidance, but he becomes more and more a puzzle she cannot crack. The more she holds onto him the more she can feel him pull away. She knows when the dream is shattering. When the revelation finally comes she wants to rage, scream, and bang her own head in for being such an idiot. Anger fades though, but hurt remains.

Tenten is a practical person because when the world shatters dreamers break like so much porcelain and glass. She does not break; she topples over, skins her knees, sprains her joints, and hobbles back onto her feet. She drags her battered psyche with her meager possessions out of the house they once lived in, away from the clan he loved so much, and settles into a place of her own. She doesn't make a big scene of it; there is a part of that still wants to give someone a black eye. No, she is Tenten, and it is not practical. She knows she will cry. She waits until she is securely in her own new home and buries her head into her pillow and let's her tears soak through. That will be the end of that. Tomorrow she will get up and hobble some more and rearrange the pieces of a picture that is not all sun shine and roses and has more than its fair share of thorns and clouds. Tenten is a practical person because she has to be.

Author's Note: The following story, mostly in the last few paragraphs, was partly inspired by Nukumi's ffnet story Ricochet. I highly recommend it.

I have wanted to write something of a response to it for a while. This is not what I had planned. Hopefully, that story will come about one day.

As for this story, I hoped to describe an ordinary tragedy. I doubt Tenten has a super angst ridden past , and I hope I didn't convey things that way. Still, I don't think her life was white picket fences either. Please leave constructive crits in your reviews.

p.s. If anyone knows of any good beta's out there, please give me a heads up. I need it for another story I am planning.


End file.
